


In No Time At All

by goldengoddess



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Character Study, epiphanies and crying in a bakery at 2 am, getting an apartment, i wrote this in a feverish haze at 11 pm i had muses writing thru me, looking too hard at your friends gorgeous facial structure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldengoddess/pseuds/goldengoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mamoru, boy without a past- without a future, becomes Mamoru, boy who could construct his own life and build his own future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In No Time At All

**Author's Note:**

> hi! some notes to preface this.   
> barely any of this i can guarantee is canon. because im on like episode 34 so. a lot of this is made up but i feel pretty good about this so who cares? basically, if you want to correct spelling or whtever knock ur socks off but no spoilers my man  
> i love mamoru chiba and im gay bye

                At just age 9 both of his parents passed away in a car crash, he survived with only a few (10, maybe 11) broken bones and some minor internal bleeding. The doctors called it a miracle. One nurse actually cried, he remembered, saying it was some blessing from heaven, as she filled out forms with another doctor, asking him his age and name. What age? What name? He thought, but did not say. The license plate was too smashed up and crumpled to read, his parents’ bodies too broken and swollen by the salty sea to identify, his head too smashed in to remember much of anything. An older nurse, a man in his mid sixties, spoke what he was thinking, but did not have the words to say, “What the hell kind of miracle leaves a young boy with no family?”

                Mamoru. Yeah, Mamoru, the nurse asked him if he liked the name. The boy, or Mamoru- as he had been dubbed- stared off, his face blank as a clean paper. She wrote it down on the paper in her nice little characters. _We’re going to see what we can do about finding your relatives._ She mumbled, _it’s going to be alright._ She said to herself.

                But it wasn’t okay and he had been hit too hard in the head to hear her tiny voice. Hit too hard in the head to understand that what would happen next is foster care, what would happen next is being emancipated at the age of 15, shit ass broke and struggling to even keep in school. It would be caving in and asking teachers for school supplies, even though the thought of asking for help felt like there was a cheese grater rubbing up his insides. What came next was loneliness and scraping for dust, living in hotels and friends houses when their parents weren’t home, wearing his school uniform all the time because what other clothing did he have? It wasn’t until he was 16, almost 17, that a friend, who was living on his own, sat down and asked him to move in.

                “Come on, I couldn’t bother you, Motoki.” Mamoru sat, elbows on his knees, a hand in his hair. “I’m doing just fine on my own, I’m gonna be alright.” He echoed the words he had forgotten everywhere else except his lips. The words that everyone said to him until it felt like those were the only words he knew.

                “No, Mamoru. You’re _not_ going to be alright.” Motoki crossed his arms. The park bench they sat on was small and old, and any movement made it creak like a haunted house. “I’ve seen how many times you’ve come to school without a lunch, how many times you look like you’ve gotten a black eye because you haven’t slept in days! I’m moving out and the apartment has two rooms. You have to come stay with me.”

                “Motoki-“

                “Stop! Alright! You don’t have to show your face, ever, you can sleep outside, if it makes you feel any better!” Anger wasn’t flattering on Motoki’s soft face, “But I want you to have somewhere to come when you’re cold or you need food or anything! Please, Mamoru, you’ve got to take this up.”

                Mamoru leaned back, head tilted up. He closed his eyes for a moment. A house, a house he and his friend could live in together. Just them, heating, a nice little kitchen, some tall apartment windows, maybe they could get a little planter- they could have lavender, or basil, and chrysanthemums and poppies and-

                He looked over at his friend. Motoki hadn’t taken his eyes off Mamoru. He looked determined, an expression that hadn’t graced the high cheeks and gentle eyes of Motoki in quite a damn while. “How am I going to pay you?” Mamoru asked.

                “I work at an arcade, maybe you could find a job there? Or my uncle runs a bakery, I’m sure he’d be happy to have you.” Motoki offered, “Besides, I’m well enough off, don’t worry about payments, really.”

                “No way in hell am I going to just mooch off of you. I’ll find a job, I promise.”

                “So, you’re accepting?” He grinned, Motoki had won this.

                “Yeah, I’m accepting.”

                He took the bakery job. Something about seeing something from scratch- flour, water, oil, yeast, herbs- worked into something better- a jar full of rancid smelling goop kept in the far corner of the refrigerator- then baked into something fantastic- fat loafs of hatched bubbly brown crust encasing soft sourdough- just made him feel human. It was a tangible measure of his self worth. He whisked together the pieces of his life that had been left scattered and threw that shit in the oven. Bam! There he was, two in the morning on a school night, preparing some rye and morning cinnamon rolls that’d need a few hours to rise, thinking about his life.

                Mamoru, as he sifted cinnamon spice mix onto a rectangle of dough, realized three important things. He licked his thumb before washing off the spiced dust in the sink and almost had a heart attack. He, a sixteen year old with no parents, no future, no life, had a future. He, the boy with no name other than what some nurse in her twenties thought was cute, had a job. He, Mamoru- with only one friend, a chronic distrust of the world, and a severe fear of cars and cliffs, was a whole ass human being with a heart and arteries to pump it!

                The whole world came crashing down. In one moment, in the dark of early morning, only two flickering incandescent lights above him, Mamoru became a Goddamned Certified Genius. He had figured it out! He had the answer! The answer to a question he had never asked, never formulated in his head or mouth, but one that had been chasing him since the moment he woke up in the terrifying cleanliness of that hospital. The answer was simply this. He was a liar.

                A liar! He thought. He wasn’t much of a liar to others, no, that would require him to actively talk to other people. But he was the biggest liar in the whole world- no, the whole _galaxy-_ to himself. He had been such a con, such a sham to his own self that he believed he was worthless. That he was a plague to his friend and a pity to strangers. He only existed so someone could think, _shit, maybe my life isn’t_ that _bad…._ But what the hell! How many people had eaten his cakes or muffins or breads or scones or anything that appeased him that morning? How many times had his boss laughed when he saw some weird combination of flavors in that morning’s bagel, only to laugh at himself when it tasted damn fine? When Mamoru had hit rock bottom, somewhere around 15 and a half, living on the streets by himself, how many times had he thought it was better than living with people who only pitied him as some mistake, a sick joke caused by a sick accident caused by a sick world, when he knew being alone was obviously more painful that being loved? It was all lies. And he knew it now.

                He laughed. Right laughed his head off. Nothing had made more sense or been less funny in his entire life. But he laughed and sunk to the floor, wiping tears from his face- not from sadness- but the kind of adrenaline you get when you’re almost hit by a car, and you walk away like it was the funniest moment of your whole goddamned life.

                With three solid beeps, his old, worn down, and chewed up watch yelled at him to cover the doughs and lock up again. He ran the back of his hand along his cheeks and wiped up the last of his epiphany tears. It felt like no time had passed between sitting on the tile floor in the bakery and walking home from school that day to work again. He was living in some other world- walking around like a hazy daydream- finding motivation to work hard, get a pay raise- take another job, move out of Motoki’s apartment into his own- no time had passed at all. He was seventeen and went to Motoki’s mother’s house to celebrate with their family, who had seemed to treat him like their own son. No time had passed between the drop in his stomach as he plummeted to the death of his old life and the same feeling of falling that struck him when he butted ways with some middle schoolers and their goddamned cat.

                He felt like no time had passed at all when he suddenly started feeling nostalgic everyday now. Everything was either a feverish dream or a lie he had constructed within his mind. He had always sorta known that. But now, with the money to eat more than left over old bread, and to buy more than one school uniform and one tee shirt and jeans to wear all the other times, he felt like he could sleep, for the first time since he was given a new life, in a miracle or curse, or whatever the hell you call dropping out of the sky and into the arms of society. He could sleep and he could feel motivated and he could take leisure walks and study and get good grades.

 No time had passed between birth and death and birth again.

 No time had passed at all.


End file.
